It is well-known that the blades of a pitch-regulated or active stall regulated wind turbine when it is stopped are pitched to a feathered parking position where an edge of the blade is directed towards the wind turbine tower and the other edge is directed away from the tower, so that aerodynamic forces from the wind on the blades will not cause harm to the wind turbine. Such stops are performed for maintenance of the turbine, at low wind periods and very high wind periods as well as for emergency stop of the operation of the wind turbine due to malfunction of the turbine itself of problems on the electrical grid which may cause the wind turbine to halt the emission of active power to the grid, such as a severe reduction of the grid voltage.
A rapid pitching of the blades may cause harm to the blades and to the wind turbine as described e.g. in international patent application WO 2006/007838 (Vestas), which discloses a method of controlling the pitch rate by rapidly pitching the blades to a position where the acceleration force on the rotor is zero, i.e. that the rotation of the rotor is not accelerated, followed by a slower pitching rate to the parking position.
In European patent application EP 1 701 034 (Winwind) is disclosed a method of stopping the rotor of a wind turbine where account is taken to reduce the pendulum motion of the wind turbine tower that is caused when the positive thrust on the rotor during normal operation providing a deflection of the tower in the downwind direction is replaced by a negative thrust when the blades are pitched towards the parking position, so that the tower when moving towards the wind from the deflected position is accelerated towards the wind direction, causing a huge bending moment on the base of the tower. This is counteracted by pitching with a high angle speed of e.g. 15°/s until the tower is about its vertical position and then reduce the angle speed to e.g. 5°/s or even 0°/s until the extreme position of the tower in the upwind direction is reached, where after the high angle speed is resumed until the parking position of the blades is reached.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a stop process of the wind turbine where the extreme bending moment applied to the wind turbine tower is reduced.